Travel time! We’re back on the road and in Spain this week. First stop – Barcelona.
It’s only fitting because Barcelona is a lot like San Francisco both in approximate square footage and size, and we all know I’ve been spending too much time in San Francisco. Barcelona is a hilly costal city that’s actually fairly walkable. It’s the largest city in Catalonia, and the second largest city in Spain by population, but we walked around fine.
We stayed in Eixample, and for being a city from the Roman times, you wouldn’t have been able to tell in this neighbourhood. The streets were clean, the boulevards wide. It also turns out to be where a lot of the nicest restaurants are, which didn’t matter so much to me but did to others. Our hotel, the Alexandra Curio was a short walk from Passeig de Gràcia, one of the main passageways in the area.
Our room came with a European-sized bathroom, but an ample sized voyeur balcony and pillow kingdom. You bet I made myself comfortable in the proper spot.
One can only loiter for so long in the hotel before it was time to get out and about. So out we went. Compared to Las Vegas where it gets bright early, sunrise doesn’t happen till past 8am here. Since I’m a nocturnal bear it didn’t matter, but it did feel strange to see how ‘early morning’ it felt even at 9am.
Barcelona is famous for being home to the architect Antoni Gaudí, known for his, what I call “pretty weird architecture.” Gaudí’s work is part of some Modernista movement that draws inspiration from Gothic and Oriental architecture. For me it just looked weird, and very organic and biological and structures felt like bones and muscles. Gaudí’s work is scattered all across the city, but his most famous work is the still-under-construction Sagrada Família, so that’s where we headed.
Like most large stone buildings, this basilica has taken a long time to build. Ground breaking happened in 1882 and construction is expected to complete by 2026, for the centenary of Gaudí’s death. This means it’ll have taken 144 years to build — which would still be less time than it took to build the Notre Dame Cathedral. Construction sure has sped up since.
La Sagrada Família is not a cathedral, but rather a basilica — something I only just learned. Cathedrals are reserved as the home of a bishop. Basilicas are any place of importance to the Pope. In contrast to the outside which is super ornate — especially the Nativity Facade (the only side Gaudí was alive to see), the inside was a lot more simplistic. I like that.
I learned that the pillars were inspired by tree trunks, and that the different columns were made of different stone to support different heights. The stained glass was also designed deliberately with a deliberate mood shift from warm glows to cool.
And this is the bronze door to the Passion facade. Over 8000 characters have been cast on these doors.
We didn’t get the right kinds of tickets that let us go up the stairs of the Basilica, so with that we were done. We did peek into the basement where we saw the 3D printing workshop where they test out sculptures before carving them out in stone. Definitely more efficient.
Next stop – the Hop on Hop off bus tour.
My impressions? Overrated. Most of the attractions were not viewable from the street. There was little narration. And it was cold. But it was a quick way to see Barcelona since we had limited time.
And that was that.
